Remember when Republicans were just jerks?
Mike, are you really going to start this piece with something that provocative?
Richard. Milhous. Nixon.
Well …
I’m not kidding. As much of a jerk as Nixon was, he never publicly fantasized about killing his political opponents. Neither did Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush or Dick Cheney.
Donald Trump didn’t either, but he took things in a whole different direction when he publicly fantasized about having sex with his daughter, which is every bit as creepy in a different way.
trump sort of opened the gates for all sorts of creepazoids in the former Grand Old Party, from Gym Jordan to Matt Gaetz to Marjorie Taylor Greene, and now Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar has taken things to a whole new level.
We probably should have known Gosar was something special when five members of his family took out an ad during his last campaign urging Arizonans not to vote for him because he was A) bad, and B) insane.
They may not have realized they were wasting their money because both of those things are selling points in Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
At any rate, he won and became an honored member of the House caucus that includes Jordan, Gaetz, Greene and at least a dozen other Looney Tunes. Apparently realizing he was moving in fast company, Gosar stepped up big-time on Twitter when he posted a video supposedly showing him killing GOP bete noire Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword and then going after President Biden as well.
Democrats and other non-jerks were understandably outraged, although Gosar said it wasn’t about murder at all and everyone should just lighten up.
“The cartoon depicts the symbolic nature of a battle between lawful and unlawful policies and in no way intended to be a targeted attack against Representative Cortez or Mr. Biden,” Gosar said in a statement released by his office. “It is a symbolic cartoon. It is not real life. Congressman Gosar cannot fly. The hero of the cartoon goes after the monster, the policy monster of open borders.”
Cortez, known colloquially as AOC, said Gosar was “creepy” and had “nothing but tumbleweeds” in his brain, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took it a lot more seriously.
“Threats of violence against Members of Congress and the President of the United States must not be tolerated,” she said.
Unless you’re a Republican.
Then you’re not just tolerated, you’re celebrated.